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News daily setupWed, 19 Dec 2018 03:23:34 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.3.18Molecular insights into spider silkhttp://news.deconmit.com/science/molecular-insights-into-spider-silk.html
http://news.deconmit.com/science/molecular-insights-into-spider-silk.html#commentsSat, 08 Dec 2018 00:16:21 +0000http://news.deconmit.com/science/molecular-insights-into-spider-silk.htmlThey are lightweight, almost invisible, highly extensible and strong, and of course biodegradable: the threads spiders use to build their webs. In fact, spider silk belongs to the toughest fibres in nature. Based on its low weight it even supersedes high-tech threads like Kevlar or Carbon. Its unique combination of strength and extensibility renders it in particular attractive for industry. Whether in aviation industry, textile industry, or medicine — potential applications of this magnificent material are manifold.

Material scientists have long sought to reproduce the fibre in the laboratory, but with limited success. Today, it is possible to manufacture artificial spider silk of similar properties as the prototype, but the molecular-level structural details responsible for material properties await to be disclosed. Now, scientists from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) delivered new insights. Dr Hannes Neuweiler, lecturer at the Institute of Biotechnology and Biophysics at the JMU, is in charge of this project. His results are published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

A molecular clamp connects protein building blocks

“The silk fibres consist of protein building blocks, so-called spidroins, which are assembled by spiders within their spinning gland,” explains Neuweiler. The terminal ends of building blocks take special roles in this process. The two ends of a spidroin are terminated by an N- and a C-terminal domain.

The domains at both ends connect protein building blocks. In the present study, Neuweiler and colleagues took a close look at the C-terminal domain. The C-terminal domain connects two spidroins through formation of an intertwined structure that resembles a molecular clamp. Neuweiler describes the central result of the study: “We observed that the clamp self-assembles in two discrete steps. While the first step comprises association of two chain ends, the second step involves the folding of labile helices in the periphery of the domain.”

This two-step process of self-assembly was previously unknown and may contribute to extensibility of spider silk. It is known that stretching of spider silk is associated with unfolding of helix. Previous work, however, traced extensibility back to the unfolding of helices in the central segment of spidroins. “We propose that the C-terminal domain might also act as module that contributes to extensibility” explains Neuweiler.

Assisting material science

In their study Neuweiler and co-workers investigated protein building blocks of the nursery web spider Euprosthenops australis. They used genetic engineering to exchange individual moieties of building blocks and modified the protein chemically using fluorescent dyes. Finally, the interaction of light with soluble proteins disclosed that the domain assembles in two discrete steps.

Neuweiler describes the result as “a contribution to our molecular-level understanding of structure, assembly and mechanical properties of spider silk.” It may aid material scientists to reproduce natural spider silk in the laboratory. Currently, modified and synthetic spidroins are being used for this purpose. “Should the C-terminal domain contribute to flexibility of the thread, material scientists may modulate mechanical properties of the fibre through modulation of the C-terminal domain,” Neuweiler says.

Actelion’s headquarters in Allschwil, Switzerland. Last year, the company was acquired by Johnson & Johnson, which was not implicated in the settlement.CreditCreditMichael Buholzer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The drug maker Actelion Pharmaceuticals has agreed to a $ 360 million settlement stemming from an investigation into whether the company illegally funneled kickbacks through a patient-assistance charity, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Actelion, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2017 and makes expensive drugs to treat a rare lung condition, is the latest pharmaceutical company to settle federal inquiries into their ties to patient-assistance groups, including whether companies have used the patient programs to increase the price of their drugs.

“Pharmaceutical companies cannot have it both ways — they cannot continue to increase drug prices while engaging in conduct designed to defeat the mechanisms that Congress designed to check such prices and then expect Medicare to pay for the ballooning costs,” Joseph H. Hunt, an assistant attorney general for the Justice Department, said in a news release.

In 2014 and 2015, prosecutors said, Actelion raised the price of its main drug, Tracleer, by nearly 30 times the rate of inflation. Tracleer, which is prescribed to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension, sells in pharmacies for an average cash price of about $ 14,500 for 60 tablets, according to the website GoodRx.

Caroline Pavis, a spokeswoman for Actelion, said in a statement that the company was committed to complying with the law. It admitted no wrongdoing in its settlement. Johnson & Johnson was not implicated in the allegations since the activity under scrutiny took place before Actelion was acquired.

Drug companies often help patients pay their out-of-pocket costs through coupons or other financial assistance. These payments are not just about benevolence — they also help blunt the outrage over rising drug prices by limiting how much patients have to pay. Insurers then cover most of the cost.

But federal anti-kickback laws prohibit companies from giving such financial assistance to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries because doing so is considered an inducement to buy their drugs. For years, drug makers have skirted those laws by instead donating to nonprofit charities, which then give the money to Medicare patients. Such arrangements are legal as long as there is no direct coordination between the pharmaceutical company and the nonprofit organization.

Federal prosecutors said Actelion violated the law by collecting detailed data in 2014 and 2015 about the patients receiving help from a nonprofit, the Caring Voice Coalition, and using the data to budget for future donations. As a result, Actelion ensured that the money it donated would be used only to assist patients who used its drugs, and not competing companies’ treatments for the pulmonary condition.

Prosecutors said Actelion kept up the practice even after the charity itself warned the company against it.

Actelion also steered Medicare patients to the Caring Voice Coalition who would have otherwise qualified financially for the company’s free drug program. By directing them to the nonprofit, the company avoided having to provide the drug to eligible patients and left Medicare to cover the cost instead, prosecutors said.

Caring Voice Coalition no longer offers such programs. Last year, the federal government revoked its right to do so, citing concerns that it was coordinating too closely with drug companies.

The charity was also involved in the settlement with United Therapeutics, which, like Actelion, sells drugs that treat the same lung condition.

“We continue to help as many patients as we can navigate challenges within the health care system,” Greg Smiley, the charity’s chief executive, said in a statement. He said he could not comment on legal issues.

]]>http://news.deconmit.com/business/drug-maker-pays-360-million-to-settle-investigation-into-charity-kickbacks.html/feed0Los Angeles Must Pay Billions to Adapt—or Slip Into the Seahttp://news.deconmit.com/science/los-angeles-must-pay-billions-to-adapt-or-slip-into-the-sea.html
http://news.deconmit.com/science/los-angeles-must-pay-billions-to-adapt-or-slip-into-the-sea.html#commentsWed, 31 Oct 2018 12:16:15 +0000http://news.deconmit.com/science/los-angeles-must-pay-billions-to-adapt-or-slip-into-the-sea.htmlLos Angeles derives much of its charm from its diversity, both of its people and its amenities—rolling hills here, lovely architecture there, a national forest to the north and legendary beaches to the west. But much of it is in trouble: Sea level rise is coming for Los Angeles County and its 74 miles of coast.

According to a new report from the New York Academy of Sciences, it’ll take LA as much as $ 6.4 billion to fortify itself against an impending increase in coastal flooding, with moves such as nourishing its beaches with extra sand and elevating its ports. The tricky thing about sea level rise, however, is the uncertainty. Climate models are getting better at predicting how high seas will rise and how quickly, but no model can deliver guarantees. Maybe sea levels will rise by a foot by 2050. Or the water might end up rising 7 feet, but not for another 200 years.

“The key threat is actually the acceleration,” says climate scientist Jeroen C.J.H. Aerts of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, coauthor of the study. If sea level rise accelerates, infrastructure improvements might not be able to keep up, especially considering the magnitude of the engineering required to, say, raise the elevation of a whole port.

One scenario is that the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will get knocked offline by storm surges from future nasty weather events—and could eventually stop functioning completely if waters rise high enough. Together, these ports handle half of the containers coming into the United States, infusing the California economy with more than $ 60 billion a year and the national economy with $ 230 billion. Losing them to sea level rise would have staggering economic effects, so the only option is to adapt.

“If the port is one day or two days out of business, that means that trains cannot run in the direction of Utah or Nevada,” says Aerts. “And it means all other businesses that rely on the port are out of business as well.” We’re talking about a hit of a billion dollars each day the ports are out of commission.

But how do you fight back against a force like the sea? “What we suggested for the Port of LA and Long Beach is actually that they expand the ports toward the sea and raise those new facilities to anticipate future sea level rise,” says Aerts. You could then turn the old port facilities into a residential area, which would itself be lifted to stay dry.

Then there’s the matter of people. Think of Malibu and you think of rich people, who may well have the money to pay for seawalls or to retrofit their homes. But many lower-income folk also live near LA County’s 74 miles of coastline, and their homes may one day be in danger of inundation as well.

Coastal businesses, too, are likely suffer. California’s legendary beaches rake in $ 40 billion a year up and down the state. But here there’s actually a proven way to fight back: beach nourishment. The idea is to supplement eroded beaches with sand dredged offshore to keep them from washing out to sea. It’s a constant battle, as you have to keep adding sand that then gets washed away, but nourishment works to maintain the bulwark that is a healthy beach. That keeps infrastructure and homes safe from the ravages of the sea.

The problem in Southern California, though, is that engineers have already dammed the rivers, cutting off a major source of sand, which typically gets washed out to sea, thus replenishing coastlines. A workaround is to dredge harbors and other places where sand tends to build up and relocate it to a beach, replicating the natural process of rivers depositing new sediment on beaches.

Engineers are also getting better at figuring out exactly where to focus their efforts as sea levels rise. Researchers, for instance, build models of how waves will look in a particular area. “From comparing the model to how it performed over the historical data, we can sort of get a sense of is this model performing in a realistic manner,” says Sean Vitousek, an engineer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “And then we can use various projections in terms of sea level rise and wave heights going forward to sort of extrapolate where the shoreline might be over a long period of time.”

These sorts of models will be essential tools to sustain the many ports, wastewater treatment facilities, world-class beaches, and other necessities that all hug the coasts. “The best solution would probably be to get the heck out of the way,” says Vitousek. “But with all the infrastructure in place and all the money involved in this, I don’t see that ever happening.” (Up in San Francisco, a massive campaign, which includes beach nourishment, is underway to save a new wastewater treatment plant from marine destruction.)

What works in LA, however, might not do as much good elsewhere. Miami, for example, is built on limestone that’s susceptible to groundwater flooding. Yet as LA experiments with self-defense, other cities are bound to take note. “My advice is be flexible,” says Aerts, coauthor of the new report. “That means if you want to protect a port, raise it and build your facilities such that it is still possible to raise it in the future. That’s the key, I think, for adapting to sea level rise, because we simply do not know exactly how big sea level rise will be in the future and when the acceleration takes place.”

The oceanic reckoning is coming for coastal communities. But by closely watching what cities like Los Angeles and nations like the Netherlands do to save themselves, the rest of the world might learn a thing or two about keeping our heads (and ports) above water.

Brazil Election: How Jair Bolsonaro Turned Crisis Into Opportunity

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Jair Bolsonaro speaking to supporters on Sunday in a televised address from his home in Rio de Janeiro after he was declared the winner of the presidential runoff.CreditCreditLeo Correa/Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO — Had the blade slashed a bit more of Jair Bolsonaro’s abdomen, the evangelical preacher who came to see him in the hospital might have had to prepare a eulogy about his friend’s presidential hopes being dashed by the same plague of violence that fueled his stunning rise.

Instead, when he saw Mr. Bolsonaro in intensive care last month, the preacher, Silas Malafaia, who is enormously popular in Brazil, saw fit to crack a joke.

“Look what God did!” Mr. Malafaia recalls telling the candidate, who was dazed after undergoing numerous procedures to stitch up his intestinal tract and other organs. “You were stabbed, and now all the other candidates are complaining about all the television coverage you’re getting.”

Before the knife attack last month, Mr. Bolsonaro had already begun to look like an indomitable phenomenon in Brazilian politics, campaigning in angry outbursts against corruption and violence that largely matched the national mood.

But far from blunting his rise, the near-fatal stabbing crystallized Mr. Bolsonaro’s conviction that only he could straighten out a country reeling from years of economic trouble, corruption scandals and a record-high wave of bloodshed, the pastor said.

“I think it gave him a greater sense of purpose,” Mr. Malafaia said. “He said, ‘More than ever, my will to help these people, to rescue our nation, has increased.’”

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Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s newly elected president, is known for his offensive remarks about women, but his hard-line agenda on crime has spurred many to vote for him. We heard from women on both sides.Published OnOct. 28, 2018CreditCreditLeo Correa/Associated Press

A knack for turning setbacks into opportunity has been a constant for Mr. Bolsonaro, the far-right populist who won Sunday’s runoff election to become Brazil’s next president, upending the political parties and norms that have governed Brazil since the end of military rule more than 30 years ago.

“Elections won’t change anything in this country,” he said during one of his seven terms in Congress. “Unfortunately, it will only change the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000. If some innocent people die, that’s fine. In every war, innocent people die. I will even be happy if I die as long as 30,000 go.”

Far from disqualifying him, his incendiary remarks over the years and throughout the campaign made Mr. Bolsonaro appealing to millions of Brazilians. Many see in him the kind of disruptive, status quo-breaking potential that propelled President Trump’s victory in 2016.

On Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro said during his victory speech that his government would uphold the constitution and democratic principles.

President Trump called on Sunday to congratulate him on his victory, following up with a tweet on Monday morning that said, “Had a very good conversation with the newly elected President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who won the race by a substantial margin. We agreed that Brazil and the United States will work closely together on Trade, Military and everything else!”

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Soldiers on patrol in Rio de Janeiro last year.CreditDado Galdieri for The New York Times

While his rivals ran conventional campaigns, Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, channeled the wrath and exasperation many Brazilians feel over rising crime and unemployment — problems that they increasingly believe the endemically corrupt governing class is powerless to tackle.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s career began with a relatively short stint as an army paratrooper that ended in controversy, paving the way for his first electoral victory in 1988.

He became enthralled by the idea of joining the armed forces in the early 1970s when soldiers descended on an area near Campinas, his hometown in the state of São Paulo, hunting down a communist guerrilla leader.

Mr. Bolsonaro, whose candidacy was backed strongly by the military, has since taken credit for guiding the soldiers that day though a hilly area he knew well. It was one of many such manhunts during the military dictatorship that spanned from 1964 to 1985.

After graduating from a military academy in 1977, Mr. Bolsonaro rose to the rank of captain in an artillery unit. But his time in uniform came to an end just as democracy was being restored. In an act of insubordination, Mr. Bolsonaro published an essay in the newsmagazine Veja in 1986 titled “The Salaries Are Low,” in which he took his superiors to task over military pay.

“I run the risk of seeing my career as a devoted soldier threatened,” Mr. Bolsonaro wrote in the piece. Despite his patriotism and excellent service record, Mr. Bolsonaro added, “I can’t dream of meeting the basic needs that a person of my cultural and social level should aspire to.”

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Federal police officers use a metal detector to search voters, before entering the polling station in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.CreditMauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

He was briefly jailed after publishing the article, and soon came under investigation over a more serious allegation: that he was part of a plan to set off explosives in military bases as a means to pressure government officials to pay soldiers more. Mr. Bolsonaro has denied he participated in such a plot, which was not carried out.

But, again, instead of ruining his prospects, the controversies made him something of a folk hero in military circles. Mr. Bolsonaro leveraged the attention into a successful run for City Council in Rio de Janeiro in 1988. Then, in 1990, he ran for a seat in Congress and won with robust backing from military supporters.

Mr. Bolsonaro became a polarizing figure soon after arriving in Brasília in the early 1990s, when the nation’s newly elected leaders were slowly rebuilding democratic institutions.

In 1993, he delivered a fiery speech before the lower house of Congress urging its demise, calling the emerging version of democracy in Brazil a lost cause.

“I am in favor of a dictatorship,” Mr. Bolsonaro thundered. “We will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy.”

He said people across the country were pining for the return of the military. “They ask, ‘When are you coming back?’”

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Mr. Bolsonaro posing for photographs with members of the military in São Paulo in May.CreditNelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Bolsonaro was highly visible and frequently brash as a lawmaker in Brasília. But he was not prolific at passing laws. And he was not regarded as a consensus-builder in a highly fractured Congress.

Only two of the dozens of bills and amendments he introduced over 27 years in Congress became law. The legislation he championed showed that he was most passionate about supporting the police and the armed forces, and weighing in on social issues like abortion and gay rights, which he has adamantly opposed.

In 2011, he told Playboy magazine that he would “rather his son die in a car accident” than be gay.

“If a gay couple came to live in my building, my property will lose value,” he added. “If they walk around holding hands, kissing, it will lose value! No one says that out of fear of being pinned as homophobe.”

Chico Alencar, a member of Congress who has followed Mr. Bolsonaro’s career since the two became city lawmakers in Rio de Janeiro at the same time, said Mr. Bolsonaro was seen as an outlier who focused zealously on a handful of issues, including communism and homosexuality.

“I have never seen him participating in debates about the electricity grid, the environment, education, health, urban mobility, housing,” said Mr. Alencar, who belongs to the liberal Socialism and Liberty Party. “He’s mono-thematic. Everything is about a communist threat. He hasn’t left the Cold War era yet.”

Mr. Alencar recalled how Mr. Bolsonaro took aim at educational materials in 2011 that sought to raise awareness about homophobia and denounced them as an incitement for children to become sexually active and question their gender identities.

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Performers on stilts at a Gay Pride Parade in Copacabana last month.CreditMaria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York Times

“He is obsessed with the issue of homosexuality,” Mr. Alencar said. “Whenever there was a public hearing about gay rights, he would go, and get extremely worked up.”

Mr. Bolsonaro’s conservative views on issues like gay rights and abortion have endeared him to some in Brazil’s evangelical caucus, which has grown steadily in recent years.

But he mainly became known for his angry outbursts, perhaps most notably in 2003, when he shoved a leftist colleague, Maria do Rosário Nunes, on camera after telling her she was not worthy of being raped.

Now Ms. Nunes, a former human rights minister, said she fears that Mr. Bolsonaro — who has threatened to banish political opponents and make it easier for the police to kill suspected criminals — will be a ruthless leader.

“He is incapable of producing a consensus, an agreement,” she said. “There is no dialogue with him.”

In early 2013, Mr. Bolsonaro began confiding in a handful of friends that he harbored presidential ambitions.

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Mr. Bolsonaro speaking to the press during a visit to the Federal Police station in Rio de Janeiro this month.CreditCarl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Man, you’re crazy,” Mr. Malafaia remembers saying when Mr. Bolsonaro broke the news to him moments before the pastor officiated at Mr. Bolsonaro’s third marriage, in March 2013. “I didn’t believe it.”

Mr. Malafaia said Mr. Bolsonaro told him he wanted to fight “the criminals from the left,” referring to the Workers’ Party, which was in power at the time.

In the following months, as hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets to protest poor public services and corruption, Mr. Bolsonaro ran the idea by a trusted colleague in Congress.

“Why don’t you aim for the Senate?” Alberto Fraga, a fellow congressman who knew Mr. Bolsonaro from their days at the military academy, recalled responding with bewilderment.

Mr. Fraga recounted that Mr. Bolsonaro acknowledged facing long odds.

“‘Look, if I get to 10 percent, I’d be very satisfied,’” Mr. Fraga recalled his saying.

In 2014, after Mr. Bolsonaro was re-elected to Congress with 464,000 votes, almost four times more than he got in 2010, he began traveling the country, holding rallies and presenting himself as a tough-talking disrupter of politics as usual.

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Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters celebrating his victory in São Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday. He is farther to the right than any president in Latin America.CreditFernando Bizerra/EPA, via Shutterstock

Breaking with the political playbook for presidential hopefuls, Mr. Bolsonaro often used curse words during unscripted addresses. Hand-pistol signs became ubiquitous everywhere he went — an allusion to the candidate’s draconian proposals to curb violent crime by making it easier for the police to gun down suspected criminals. Soon, supporters started calling him “mito,” or the legend.

Supporters began using yellow T-shirts with the slogan “Brazil is my party” that resemble the soccer jerseys Brazilians have worn in the past as a symbol of pride and national unity.

Many seasoned politicians and analysts expected Mr. Bolsonaro’s candidacy to fizzle as voters took a harder look at his long history of incendiary remarks against women and people of color.

But what many assumed would be a liability turned out to be an asset for an electorate fed up with a governing class widely regarded as duplicitous and dishonest, said Joice Hasselmann, who was elected to Congress this month by tying her candidacy to Mr. Bolsonaro’s.

“Jair has no filter,” Ms. Hasselmann said. “There’s a direct link between what he thinks and what he says.”

After the stabbing, Mr. Bolsonaro remained largely confined to a hospital room and later his beachfront home in Rio. He has done few probing interviews and declined to take part in debates.

But in the near-daily videos he has broadcast on Facebook, where he has more than eight million followers, Mr. Bolsonaro, often accompanied by one of his sons, holds forth, jumping from one issue to the next, often toggling between agitation and sarcasm.

During a recent one, he lifted his shirt to show his colostomy bag and a large scar from the stabbing.

As his standing in the polls rose, veteran Brazilian political operators marveled at how a campaign strategy that seemed so haphazard was beating everyone else’s. If it looked messy and improvisational from the outside, Mr. Malafaia said, it’s because it was.

“Look, I’m going to say something, and you can laugh,” Mr. Malafaia said, adding that Mr. Bolsonaro and his campaign “had no real strategy.”

Troubled by slowing growth, persistent debt problems and President Trump’s trade war, the Chinese government has taken steps in recent months to shore up its economy. It has pared back a high-profile campaign to tackle debt. It has restarted big infrastructure projects, a traditional economic engine. It has even censored bad economic news.

On Sunday, Beijing went one step further.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, pulled a financial lever that will effectively pump $ 175 billion into the economy. The government is aiming to help small and midsize businesses in particular, which have had trouble obtaining loans and face other rising pressures.

The move signals that China’s economy “is really not doing well,” Chen Shouhong, the founder of the investment information platform Gelonghui, wrote on WeChat, a popular Chinese social media service.

The growing trade war with the United States has been the most visible threat. In September, the United States imposed tariffs on $ 200 billion in goods from China. President Trump has shown little inclination to back off and relations between the two countries have cooled, suggesting the trade war could worsen before it gets better.

So far, the trade war has had only a minor impact on China’s $ 12 trillion economy. Trade isn’t as important to China as it once was, thanks in part to the rise of a middle class that has been a ready buyer of Chinese goods at home. Still, tariffs could hurt the economy the longer they last. In September, new export orders — one indicator of China’s manufacturing — fell to the lowest level since 2016.

China also has to contend with a stock market that has fallen by around 15 percent this year and a currency that has lost 10 percent of its value against the dollar. Some Chinese entrepreneurs also say the business environment is souring. The government could soon require companies to pay more in taxes and benefits.

China has used these methods for years to spur growth, but they represent a retreat from more recent government efforts to pare back debt. China unleashed a wave of spending and lending beginning a decade ago that rescued its economy from the global economic downturn but left many of its companies and local governments heavily burdened with debt. Economists have warned that China must address its debt problems if it hopes to keep its economy humming.

Beijing appeared to be listening. Earlier this year Liu He, a trusted economic adviser to Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, promised to rein in China’s debt over the next three years. Mr. Liu’s appointment in March as vice premier overseeing financial and industrial policy was seen as a commitment by Chinese officials to crack down on lending.

Now, Beijing has changed its tune. In August, the People’s Bank of China said it would ensure that money flowed from its state-controlled banking sector to companies that needed it, in particular exporters and small and medium enterprises. The National Development and Reform Commission also flagged concerns about the financing difficulties of private companies in June.

The government has promoted rail and other infrastructure projects that were previously stalled or blocked because of concerns about ballooning debt.

If it wasn’t clear before last week that Chinese officials were concerned about a slowing economy, a move by the government on Sept. 28 to censor negative economic news made it clear. Among the items on a list of forbidden topics on a government directive sent to journalists in China were any economic data that showed a slowing economy, local government debt and risks, and signs of declining consumer confidence.

On Sunday, the People’s Bank of China said that it would cut the amount of money that some lenders are required to hold in reserve — called the reserve ratio — by one percentage point. The move essentially frees up more money for China’s state-controlled banks to lend out.

About $ 65.5 billion of that cash injection will be directed to banks to repay debts that are due in coming weeks, while the rest will be pushed into the financial market.

The central bank made the move to ensure “reasonable and sufficient liquidity” in China’s economy, it said. This is the fourth time this year that the central bank has cut the reserve ratio.

But this time, the reserve ratio cut, which is set to go into effect on Oct. 15, was unusually big and broad. While the central bank cut the reserve ratio by a similar amount earlier this year, it put more conditions on how banks could use the extra money. The bank has shied away from making such stark moves in recent years, as it has found more subtle ways to adjust the amount of money in China’s financial system depending on its needs.

The announcement on Sunday suggests the central bank felt it had to do more than that. The size and breadth of the move, wrote Mr. Chen, the Gelonghui founder, shows “there are fewer and fewer tools in the P.B.O.C. toolbox.”

The move was in direct response to the slowing growth, Zhang Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said on Sunday. Mr. Zhang predicted that China’s third-quarter gross domestic product would drop to 6.6 percent growth compared with 6.8 percent a year ago and that its fourth-quarter figure could be as low as 6.4 percent. China posted economic growth of 6.7 percent in the quarter that ended in June, though China’s official figures are widely doubted.

“Sino-U.S. trade frictions will further reduce the contribution of imports and exports to economy growth,” Mr. Zhang, who is also chief economist at Ping An Securities, wrote on WeChat.

“If export growth slows down due to trade frictions, it will influence manufacturing investment growth,” he added.

Ailin Tang contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Betraying Worries, China Is Pumping $ 174 Billion Into Economy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

]]>http://news.deconmit.com/business/china-to-pump-175-billion-into-its-economy-as-slowdown-and-trade-war-loom.html/feed0New, highly stable catalyst may help turn water into fuelhttp://news.deconmit.com/science/new-highly-stable-catalyst-may-help-turn-water-into-fuel.html
http://news.deconmit.com/science/new-highly-stable-catalyst-may-help-turn-water-into-fuel.html#commentsSun, 30 Sep 2018 16:16:58 +0000http://news.deconmit.com/science/new-highly-stable-catalyst-may-help-turn-water-into-fuel.htmlBreaking the bonds between oxygen and hydrogen in water could be a key to the creation of hydrogen in a sustainable manner, but finding an economically viable technique for this has proved difficult. Researchers report a new hydrogen-generating catalyst that clears many of the obstacles — abundance, stability in acid conditions and efficiency.

In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report on an electrocatalytic material made from mixing metal compounds with substance called perchloric acid.

Electrolyzers use electricity to break water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The most efficient of these devices use corrosive acids and electrode materials made of the metal compounds iridium oxide or ruthenium oxide. Iridium oxide is the more stable of the two, but iridium is one of the least abundant elements on Earth, so researchers are in search of an alternative material.

“Much of the previous work was performed with electrolyzers made from just two elements — one metal and oxygen,” said Hong Yang, a co-author and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois. “In a recent study, we found if a compound has two metal elements — yttrium and ruthenium — and oxygen, the rate of water-splitting reaction increased.”

Yao Qin, a co-author and former member of Yang’s group, first experimented with the procedure for making this new material by using different acids and heating temperatures to increase the rate of the water-splitting reaction.

The researchers found that when they used perchloric acid as a catalyst and let the mixture react under heat, the physical nature of the yttrium ruthenate product changed.

“The material became more porous and also had a new crystalline structure, different from all the solid catalysts we made before,” said Jaemin Kim, the lead author and a postdoctoral researcher. The new porous material the team developed — a pyrochlore oxide of yttrium ruthenate — can split water molecules at a higher rate than the current industry standard.

“Because of the increased activity it promotes, a porous structure is highly desirable when it comes electrocatalysts,” Yang said. “These pores can be produced synthetically with nanometer-sized templates and substances for making ceramics; however, those can’t hold up under the high-temperature conditions needed for making high-quality solid catalysts.”

Yang and his team looked at the structure of their new material with an electron microscope and found that it is four times more porous than the original yttrium ruthenate they developed in a previous study, and three times that of the iridium and ruthenium oxides used commercially.

“It was surprising to find that the acid we chose as a catalyst for this reaction turned out to improve the structure of the material used for the electrodes,” Yang said. “This realization was fortuitous and quite valuable for us.”

The next steps for the group are to fabricate a laboratory-scale device for further testing and to continue to improve the porous electrode stability in acidic environments, Yang said.

“Stability of the electrodes in acid will always be a problem, but we feel that we have come up with something new and different when compared with other work in this area,” Yang said. “This type of research will be quite impactful regarding hydrogen generation for sustainable energy in the future.”

]]>http://news.deconmit.com/science/new-highly-stable-catalyst-may-help-turn-water-into-fuel.html/feed0‘Robotic Skins’ turn everyday objects into robotshttp://news.deconmit.com/science/robotic-skins-turn-everyday-objects-into-robots.html
http://news.deconmit.com/science/robotic-skins-turn-everyday-objects-into-robots.html#commentsWed, 19 Sep 2018 20:16:36 +0000http://news.deconmit.com/science/robotic-skins-turn-everyday-objects-into-robots.htmlWhen you think of robotics, you likely think of something rigid, heavy, and built for a specific purpose. New “Robotic Skins” technology developed by Yale researchers flips that notion on its head, allowing users to animate the inanimate and turn everyday objects into robots.

Developed in the lab of Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, robotic skins enable users to design their own robotic systems. Although the skins are designed with no specific task in mind, Kramer-Bottiglio said, they could be used for everything from search-and-rescue robots to wearable technologies. The results of the team’s work are published today in Science Robotics.

The skins are made from elastic sheets embedded with sensors and actuators developed in Kramer-Bottiglio’s lab. Placed on a deformable object — a stuffed animal or a foam tube, for instance — the skins animate these objects from their surfaces. The makeshift robots can perform different tasks depending on the properties of the soft objects and how the skins are applied.

“We can take the skins and wrap them around one object to perform a task — locomotion, for example — and then take them off and put them on a different object to perform a different task, such as grasping and moving an object,” she said. “We can then take those same skins off that object and put them on a shirt to make an active wearable device.”

Robots are typically built with a single purpose in mind. The robotic skins, however, allow users to create multi-functional robots on the fly. That means they can be used in settings that hadn’t even been considered when they were designed, said Kramer-Bottiglio.

Additionally, using more than one skin at a time allows for more complex movements. For instance, Kramer-Bottiglio said, you can layer the skins to get different types of motion. “Now we can get combined modes of actuation — for example, simultaneous compression and bending.”

To demonstrate the robotic skins in action, the researchers created a handful of prototypes. These include foam cylinders that move like an inchworm, a shirt-like wearable device designed to correct poor posture, and a device with a gripper that can grasp and move objects.

Kramer-Bottiglio said she came up with the idea for the devices a few years ago when NASA put out a call for soft robotic systems. The technology was designed in partnership with NASA, and its multifunctional and reusable nature would allow astronauts to accomplish an array of tasks with the same reconfigurable material. The same skins used to make a robotic arm out of a piece of foam could be removed and applied to create a soft Mars rover that can roll over rough terrain. With the robotic skins on board, the Yale scientist said, anything from balloons to balls of crumpled paper could potentially be made into a robot with a purpose.

“One of the main things I considered was the importance of multifunctionality, especially for deep space exploration where the environment is unpredictable,” she said. “The question is: How do you prepare for the unknown unknowns?”

For the same line of research, Kramer-Bottiglio was recently awarded a $ 2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, as part of its Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program.

Next, she said, the lab will work on streamlining the devices and explore the possibility of 3D printing the components.

Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce

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Pope Francis, taking questions after his papal visit to Ireland, urged parents not to ignore their gay children or throw them out of the family.Published OnAug. 28, 2018CreditCreditImage by Pool photo by Gregorio Borgias

ROME — Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. “Who am I to judge?” the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests.

Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend, when a caustic letter published by the Vatican’s former top diplomat in the United States blamed a “homosexual current” in the Vatican hierarchy for sexual abuse. It called for Francis’ resignation, accusing him of covering up for a disgraced cardinal, Theodore E. McCarrick.

With the letter — released in the middle of the pope’s visit to Ireland — an ideologically motivated opposition has weaponized the church’s sex abuse crisis to threaten not only Francis’ agenda but his entire papacy. At the very least, it has returned the issue of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church, which many conservatives are convinced lies behind the abuse crisis, to the center of debate.

Vatican intrigues and power struggles are nothing new, but they usually remain within the medieval walls or fly over the heads of the Catholic faithful around the globe.

This battle, however, is being waged in an exceptionally open and brutal manner. It is fueled by a modern media age, the pope’s reluctance to silence critics, and an issue — child sexual abuse — that perhaps more than any other has prompted defections among the faithful.

The accusations in the letter remain unsubstantiated. Asked Sunday night about their validity, Francis said he would not dignify them with a response.

But they are serious, and the pope’s vague answer has only heightened public interest, particularly in the core accusation — that he was told about Mr. McCarrick’s history of sexual relations with seminarians and did nothing about it.

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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, center, the former top Vatican diplomat in the United States, in Portland, Me., in 2014.CreditPool photo by Gabe Souza

“It’s a serious problem,” said Sandro Magister, a veteran Vatican observer at L’Espresso magazine, who said the remarkable public broadside was indicative of enormous frustration among conservatives toward Francis. He doubted whether Francis, who has essentially ignored such salvos in the past, would be able to do so this time.

“With this issue,” Mr. Magister said, “the public impact is much stronger, and on this ground he is rather vulnerable.”

Francis’ non-answer is in keeping with his reluctance to give oxygen to a small — if influential and noisy — group of conservative prelates and writers aligned with the author of the letter, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former top Vatican diplomat in the United States.

Francis has removed from office or sidelined ideological opponents in the bureaucracy of the church, but he has also been more willing than his predecessors to allow open debate and even dissent. Many have challenged him, in sometimes coarse language, for his openness to making some church practices less rigid, among them the exclusion of divorced and remarried parishioners from receiving Communion.

On Monday, Francis’ supporters shrugged off the letter as another desperate attack from frustrated conservatives still unaccustomed to not getting their way. They expressed confidence that its accusations would be disproved.

Some abuse survivors, who have been pressing Pope Francis to take concrete action about the crisis instead of just offering apologies, however heartfelt, argued that Archbishop Viganò’s letter exploited the abuse for political gain. The letter did not, they said, show particular concern about the plight of the church’s children.

The child sex abuse scandal has riveted the attention of the world’s Catholics, but the shift in the church’s direction under Francis has enlivened his enemies. They believe that the pope’s message of inclusion is undermining longstanding church rules, and that it is leading to confusion and perhaps schism.

The explosion of conservative Catholic blogs — many in the United States — in an era of lightning-fast modern media, as well as the strategically timed release of the letter combined to make a potent rear-guard action against the 81-year-old pontiff.

“Let us be clear that they are still allegations, but as your shepherd I find them to be credible,” the conservative Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Tex., wrote in an open letter to his diocese. “I will lend my voice in whatever way necessary to call for this investigation and urge that its findings demand accountability of all found to be culpable even at the highest levels of the church.”

If Francis thought that the debate over homosexuality in the church was behind him, the events of this week suggest otherwise.

“The homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated,” Archbishop Viganò wrote, arguing that it was the root cause of abuse.

The abuse scandal had already set off a fierce debate in Catholic journals and across churches. Some critics of the church have blamed the vows of celibacy, arguing that suppressing the human libido can lead to pedophilia and rape.

At the Conference of Catholic Families, a rival, conservative event to the Vatican’s World Meeting of Families in Dublin this past weekend, organizers found the pope’s recent condemnation of abuse unsatisfactory because he did not call out homosexuality. That, they say, has turned seminaries into “cesspits.”

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Cardinal Raymond Burke, a high-ranking Vatican conservative, has spoken of what he says is “a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the church.”CreditAndrew Medichini/Associated Press

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of South Africa has also blamed homosexuality for the scandal. And Cardinal Raymond Burke, a high-ranking Vatican conservative and a leading critic of the pope, has denounced what he says is “a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the church.” The problem, he said, is not only among the clergy “but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root.”

In 2005, the Vatican stated that even celibate gays should not be priests, and instructed church leaders to reject seminary applications from men who “practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’”

Critics of Francis believe that a meeting in Rome of bishops from around the world in October on the theme of youth could become a battleground. They want to make sure the church’s opposition to homosexuality is on the radar should the issue of sex abuse come up, as it now certainly will.

In May, Francis reportedly told Italian bishops that when it came to potentially gay seminary applicants, “if there’s even the slightest doubt, better to not accept them.”

Even so, Archbishop Viganò and his allies have argued that the pope and his supporters are too accepting of gays in the church and that they willfully ignore that the vast majority of victims of sexual abuse by priests are male.

Most experts reject the conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia as a dangerous route to bigotry against gays. Outside the church, the belief has been widely discredited as retrograde.

But it still has traction in the Vatican. Many here believe that an investigation by three cardinals following the 2012 Vatileaks scandal — based on the leaked memos of the same Archbishop Viganò who wrote Sunday’s letter — revealed a gay lobby working in the Holy See and that their report contributed to the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI.

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Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2016.CreditGregorio Borgia/Associated Press

The report remains a closely held Vatican secret, but in his letter, Archbishop Viganò included a slew of names and targeted allies of Francis who share the pope’s views.

He said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago was “blinded by his pro-gay ideology.” And he took issue with the assertion of Cardinal Cupich, a past president of the Committee on Protection of Children and Young People, “that the main problem in the crisis of sexual abuse by clergy is not homosexuality, and that affirming this is only a way of diverting attention from the real problem, which is clericalism.”

In an interview on Sunday, Cardinal Cupich said: “I think it is wrong to scapegoat gays and homosexuals as though there is a greater likelihood that gay people are going to offend children than straight people. That data doesn’t bear that out.”

The Viganò letter also lamented that the Vatican had brought on the Jesuit priest James Martin, who has written a book on how to make gay Catholics feel more welcome in the Church, as a consultor of the Secretariat for Communications.

The church under Francis, Archbishop Viganò writes, has “chosen to corrupt the young people who will soon gather in Dublin for the World Meeting of Families,” by inviting Father Martin to speak there.

In an interview, Father Martin said, “The reason it seems like all gay priests are abusers is that there are no public counterexamples of healthy celibate gay priests, because most gay priests are afraid to come out in this poisonous environment.”

He rejected the notion of gay priests as more likely to commit child abuse as scientifically wrong and “simply a stereotype.” He added, “It’s all about fear.”

Even as the controversy swirled around him, Pope Francis worked to allay that fear Sunday night.

One of the last questions on the papal plane was what a Catholic parent should say to a gay son or daughter.

“Do not condemn,” Francis said. “Dialogue. Understand. Make space for the son or daughter; make space so they express themselves.”

He suggested a conversation the parent might have with a child, offering: “You are my son. You are my daughter, as you are. I am your father, or mother. Let’s talk.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Francis Takes High Road As Conservatives Pounce, Taking Criticisms Public. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Imran Khan, Former Cricket Star, Pulls Into Lead in Pakistan’s Vote Count

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Imran Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, at a polling station in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Wednesday. Partial results showed Mr. Khan’s party leading in several districts.CreditAthit Perawongmetha/Reuters

LAHORE, Pakistan — The party of Imran Khan, a former Pakistani cricket star, pulled firmly ahead in the early count after Wednesday’s elections, but the results were disputed by dozens of candidates who lodged complaints of vote rigging.

Mr. Khan, 65, is the country’s most dynamic politician, and many believe that Pakistan’s influential military has been helping his campaign by intimidating, blackmailing and impeding his political rivals. He has railed against the United States’ counterterrorism policy in the region.

Mr. Khan’s party was leading in 110 constituencies while the party in second place maintained a lead in 67 constituencies, according to reports by Pakistani state-run television stations, with about half of the votes counted by 3 a.m. on Thursday. The partial results were unofficial, the television station said.

That left Mr. Khan’s party still short of a majority in parliament that he needs to claim victory outright. There are 272 contested seats in Pakistan’s parliamentary system. Any party that hopes to form a majority and appoint a prime minister needs to command a coalition of least 137 seats.

Several leading politicians of the other major parties have rejected the early results, accusing election officers of counting ballots in secret and other irregularities. Many observers said it was unusual that the election commission had not completed at least some of the race results by early Thursday morning. The elections began Wednesday morning.

Mr. Khan has narrowed his own path to victory by saying that he would never form a coalition with the other leading parties, calling them corrupt and dynastic. After casting his vote in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, he said he would not declare himself the winner prematurely.

“I am a sportsman who has a training of 21 years in the cricket grounds,” he said. “I do not declare victory till the last ball.”

Voting proceeded smoothly in most parts of the country but in Quetta, in the southwest, 31 people were killed by a suicide bomber who attacked a polling station, raising the death toll in what has already been one of the bloodiest election seasons in the country’s history.

Several suicide bombers struck candidates and campaign events before the voting, killing more than 150 people.

This will be only the second time in Pakistan’s 70-year history that power will be transferred from one civilian government to another. Clearly that is proving more complicated than many people expected.

More Pakistani women than ever were registered to vote this time around. But in one village near Peshawar, in the north, tribal elders blocked hundreds of women from voting on Wednesday. They said the matter was simple: Women should never leave the house.

This could have been an occasion for Pakistanis to celebrate their democracy. Instead, the campaign has been marred by a series of attacks on candidates and campaign rallies, suppression of the news media, accusations of manipulation by the military and a rise in extreme Islamist candidates.

The military has ruled Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country, through various coups for nearly half the country’s history since it gained independence in 1947. Even during civilian rule, the country’s generals have wielded enormous power, setting the agenda for the country’s foreign and security policies and tolerance of extremist groups — including the Afghan Taliban in its fight against the United States-backed government in Afghanistan next door.

The leader of what had been the pre-eminent party, Nawaz Sharif, a three-time prime minister, was jailed by an anticorruption court less than two weeks before the elections.

In July 2017, Supreme Court justices ousted Mr. Sharif from office in a ruling that was widely seen as having been delivered under pressure from the army. At the same time, many members of Mr. Sharif’s party have deserted him and maybe not by choice. Evidence is mounting that the security services threatened or blackmailed them.

His party, known by its initials P.M.L.-N, now led by his brother, Shehbaz, remained in second place behind Mr. Khan’s party, the Pakistan Movement for Justice.

]]>http://news.deconmit.com/world/imran-khan-former-cricket-star-pulls-into-lead-in-pakistans-vote-count.html/feed0Trump Hasn’t Signed a Space Force Into Being—Yethttp://news.deconmit.com/science/trump-hasnt-signed-a-space-force-into-beingyet.html
http://news.deconmit.com/science/trump-hasnt-signed-a-space-force-into-beingyet.html#commentsTue, 19 Jun 2018 08:16:12 +0000http://news.deconmit.com/science/trump-hasnt-signed-a-space-force-into-beingyet.htmlAfter months of teasing a new military arm devoted to extra-stratospheric security, President Donald Trump publicly ordered the Department of Defense and the Pentagon to immediately begin establishing a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces on Monday.

Well, maybe. The president’s statement was not accompanied by any written directive or executive order calling for the creation of a new, space-based branch of the armed forces, as some outlets initially reported. The White House press office confirmed that the only signed document issued today was a policy directive for reducing satellite clutter.

The commander in chief’s remarks, while perhaps not official, do appear to be taken seriously. But it’s still totally unclear how and where and when the Pentagon is supposed to stand up its first new armed service since 1947. Or even if it can, without congressional approval. Trump—who first began calling for troops in space earlier this year—made the surprise announcement during a speech at a meeting of the newly-revived National Space Council, the purpose of which was to unveil the US’s new framework for managing commercial space traffic and monitoring debris.

This wasn’t just another instance of the president making off-the-cuff proclamations—like in March, when Trump raised the prospect of creating a Space Force in remarks to troops at a marine air base outside San Diego. During today’s appearance, Trump roped in a high-ranking military official. From the podium he called out for Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “General Dunford, if you would carry that assignment out, I would be very greatly honored,” Trump said.

“We got it,” the general replied.

Neither the President nor the general provided any more details about what exactly the Space Force would do, how it would be funded, which assets would be rolled into it, and who would run it. As it stands, the US does have a space force of a type: The Air Force is largely in charge of national security in space, including supervising launches and controlling DoD satellites. Trump indicated that his Space Force would be “separate but equal” from the Air Force—a grotesque misappropriation of the phrase derived from Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case once used to legally prop up racial segregation.

When asked whether Dunford’s verbal affirmation constituted an official endorsement, the Pentagon emailed a statement it had released earlier in the day from Dana W. White, the DoD’s chief spokeswoman: “We understand the President’s guidance. Our Policy Board will begin working on this issue, which has implications for intelligence operations for the Air Force, Army, Marines, and Navy. Working with Congress, this will be a deliberate process with a great deal of input from multiple stakeholders.”

It’s exactly that kind of measured bureaucratic process that has mired the idea of a military branch devoted to space protection in partisan controversy—even as far back as Bill Clinton’s presidency. Last July, Trump’s own Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote in a letter to a House subcommittee: “I oppose the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting functions.”

While the Pentagon might have been caught by surprise today, the military has recently been in the process of evaluating the concept of a Space Force, its feasibility, and its structure. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018 directed the DoD to hire an independent research organization to provide Congress with a roadmap for a “space corps.” That report is due in August. A potentially more interesting study, due in September, is underway at the Center for Naval Analyses, according to aerospace security expert, Todd Harrison. That report could make its way to Congress in time to consider for next year’s NDAA negotiations.

“The big challenge over the next six months is going to be to get some bipartisan support behind this so it doesn’t turn into a laughingstock, the way that Reagan’s Star Wars did,” says John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org. He’s argued before Congress for decades about a national security imperative for the US to maintain its superpower status in space. In his view, that includes a separate military branch. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to do it. Space is different from the air and the sea and the land.” And so too will its long-term military strategy have to be.